CARNEGIE MUSEUMS, PITTSBURGH

WORDS BY TONY WARE

THE CULTURE OF CARNEGIE

Thanks to one man’s philanthropic vision,  Pittsburgh’s Carnegie  Museums offer art, history and much more.

Andy Warhol,
Self-Portrait, 1986Nestled at the base of Mount Washington in downtown Pittsburgh is a scene many might call picture-postcard perfect. Viewed from above, the buildings of this former hub of the American steel trade are seen to perch at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers into the Ohio. And this convergence is a perfect metaphor for “The Steel City,” a city where industry and artistry has never been far s eparated, following the efforts of philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie.

Over his lifetime, Carnegie gave away more than $350m —acting as benefactor to numerous world-renowned educational institutions (still flourishing today) and some 3,000 libraries in several English-speaking countries, among other efforts to build and equip communities. But nowhere is his patronage more apparent than in Pitt sburgh, home to the Carnegie Museums.

Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, Andrew Carnegie settled with his family in Allegheny, PA, at the ag e of 13. After a succession of jobs—including bobbin boy, telegraph operator and secretary—this son of a weaver began to make his eventual fortune through the railroads and steel works centered in Pittsburgh. By the time Carnegie was 65, at which point he sold his company to JP Morgan, he was one of the two richest men in the world along with John D Rockefeller.

Following the sale of his businesses, Carnegie devoted the rest of his life to philanthropic aims, feeling—as he wrote in 1889’s The Gospel of Wealth—that the rich had an obligation to enrich society.

He writes: “My aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth.”

My aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that brings into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light.
Andrew Carnegie, 1889

In those last years, Carnegie forged many cultural institutions, offering something back for the efforts and profits scraped from Pittsburgh’s backs and land. And perhaps Carnegie’s most brightly shining jewels in his philanthropist portfolio are the Carnegie Museums: celebrations of antiquities and innovations throughout the ages from prehistoric history to Pop art.

A lifesize statue of Diplodocus
carnegii stands outside the
Carnegie Museum of
Natural History.

Along with Carnegie, Pop art icon Andy Warhol is certainly one of Pittsburgh’s most internationally famous sons—born, raised and educated in Western Pennsylvania before moving to New York City in 1950. This is why it’s appropriate that the world’s largest, most comprehensive museum dedicated to only one artist—and the most contemporary of the Carnegie Museums—is Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, which houses over 4,000 of the artist’s works and displays 500 at a time.

Located on Sandusky Street, at the base of the Andy Warhol Bridge leading to downtown Pittsburgh, the Warhol Museum opened in 1994 on the North Shore. Displayed are countless examples of Warhol’s impact on contemporary art and why his reputation has and will continue to exceed the “15 minutes of fame” he is often quoted as predicting for every individual.

The Chariot of Aurora, 1935,
by Jean Dupas and Jean DunandA seven-floor warehouse conversion, the Warhol Museum features ever-shifting galleries in a concrete-and-plaster setting that would do Warhol’s New York studio, the Factory, proud. The minimalist environment helps emphasize the colorful, off-register nature of many of Warhol’s works, which are offered unfettered for visitors to scrutinize closely and even photograph.

To get the most out of the Warhol museum, it’s a good idea to explore it starting from the top, on the seventh floor, and work your way back down to the ground. Floors seven and six are spaces for temporary exhibits, which often explore Warhol’s fascinations with the ethereality and immortality of fame, fleeting glamour, gender identity and the co-opting of commerce. Other contemporary artists such as Canada’s multimedia-manipulating General Idea collective and Baltimore’s king of trash/cult cinema John Waters have been spotlighted, while in 2006, Henry Darger’s folk art illustrations and Grayson Perry’s subversive ceramics will be featured, among other installations.

From floor five down, visitors are introduced to Warhol’s varied representations of both the experience of life and the act of replicating it through art. Along with screen prints, illustrations, photographs and portraits that explore the currency of celebrity are some of Warhol’s videos of frayed bohemia and installations of art that manipulates the idea of familiarity. Warhol’s Heinz boxes from his Pop phase must certainly have a sentimental edge, as the ketchup manufacturer is based in Pittsburgh. And the “Silver Clouds” room—a room of free-floating Mylar balloons with mirrored surfaces—is deliciously narcissistic. Other ways visitors are invited to interact with the Warhol Museum include “Good Fridays,” when the museum is open till 10pm and there’s a bar, and assorted film, lecture and concert series.

Works by Degas, Millet
and Monet hang in the
Carnegie Museum of Art’s
permanent collection. To find Carnegie’s more “classical” collections requires a short ride over Mount Washington to the neighborhood of Oakland. It was here in 1895 that Carnegie, in the munificence of his latter days, established the Carnegie Institute (now Carnegie Mellon University), which includes several museums founded on the sponsor’s educational and cultural ideals.

Two of these museums are housed in one labyrinthine complex. Within a palatial turn-of-the-century building sporting four allegorical figures—Shakespeare for literature, Michelangelo for visual arts, Galileo for science and Bach for music—can be found the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, among other research and preservation institutions.

The impetus behind the founding of the Carnegie Museum of Art was to celebrate the “old masters of tomorrow.” And while there are Asian, African, Roman and Greek selections—and decorative arts of the 17th century to today—the permanent collection’s strength is an inspiring selection of late 19th century to contemporary American and European art arranged in chronological order throughout several bursting galleries. “Art” is not restricted to painting, however, but dotted with furniture and ceramics of the periods.

Carnegie Museum of Art. Works by Winslow Homer and Degas, Millet and Signac contrast still life with vibrant characters, saturated color with austerity. Binders are provided for key galleries to walk you through Monet, Renoir, Rodin, Klimt, Munch, Matisse and Picasso, Feininger, Leger and Mondrian, to name but a few.

There is much to see: Post-Impressionists and Expressionists can be found in the post-WWI heartland-focused works of Hartley, Lepper and John Kane; a gallery of abstraction; the textural illusions and neutered subjects of de Kooning, Pollock and Rothko in the ’60s and ’70s; and finally contemporary postmodern and deconstructive neon and video installations alongside mammoth canvases that direct attention to the act of painting itself. Modernist Luke Swank and ’50s-era Pittsburgh photography will be highlighted in 2006.

Carnegie Museum of
Natural History houses
one of the country’s
most dazzling mineral
and gem collections.

Thanks to the adjoining Heinz Architectural Center, exhibits such as the recent “Frank Lloyd Wright: Renewing the Legacy” provide engaging, thematic looks into the contemporary applications of classic design. In 2006, the barns of Western Pennsylvania will be showcased. Those further fascinated by blueprints can wander through the Hall of Architecture, featuring plaster casts of architectural achievements, and the Hall of Sculpture, which replicates the Parthenon.

If natural beauty—rather than man-made—is your thing, then the Carnegie Museum of Natural History is your destination, no bones about it. Make that tons of bones about it. Pittsburgh has seen some “DINO-mite Days” thanks to the world-class PaleoLab, the Bonehunters’ Quarry and the evolving “Dinosaurs in Their World” renovation planned to open in 2007 to mark the Dinosaur Hall’s 100th anniversary.

Over a million-and-a-half visitors each year explore the more than one million square feet of exhibition space of the Carnegie Museums. The industrialist who founded them would be proud, because Pittsburgh’s reputation as a cultural center is internationally ironclad.

For more information on the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, including the family-oriented Carnegie Science Center, visit www.carnegiemuseums.org.

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© Ric Evans
© AWF. Courtesy The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh